I dropped in to the local fly tying club here in Charlottetown last week. The group is pretty hard core; salmon fly tattoos and everything. We got talking about dry fly solution, and they all seemed to agree that Rain-X, the stuff for repelling water from your car windshield, works great as a fly floatant. Just get a sealed little bottle drop in fly and shake, remove fly and let dry. I was intrigued at the idea and am looking forward to trying it out. Anyone else every stumble across this 2 dollar tip?

Ethanol
The active ingredients in Rain-X work only if applied to a clean, dry surface. Lucky, then, that all of the ingredients are dissolved in ethanol. Not only is it a really good solvent, it helps remove dirt and oil from the glass, then evaporates.

Isopropanol
Rubbing alcohol. Some poor souls will try anything to get drunk, so to keep them from chugging ethanol-rich Rain-X, the company adds this stuff — it shares a few chemical properties with its cocktail-friendly cousin, but it’s an unpalatable poison. Mixologize with Rain-X and you’ll end up way under the weather.

Ethyl sulfate
During production, the Rain-X gods add sulfuric acid to the mix (for reasons we’ll explain later). By the time it reaches your auto-parts store, some of it has mixed with ethanol and converted to this byproduct, also found in the urine of alcoholics.

Chlorotrimethylsilane
Residue from PDMS synthesis, this compound is regularly used to silanize — that is, chemically neutralize — laboratory glassware so organics won’t stick. Same for your windshield, too? A Rain-X chemist told us he couldn’t say for sure.

Siloxanes and silicones, di-me, hydroxy-terminated
Fragments of PDMS, broken down by that sulfuric acid we mentioned. The hydroxyl groups help them bond strongly to glass, making it tougher for your wipers to disperse the Rain-X.

I may have been the one on FAOL who said it didn't work well because it just didn't work well for me. I've had better results with the cheap SA floatant, which isn't the greatest either, but better than RainX.

I stick to mucilin and loon dust for CDC.. more often than not though i'll skip the mucilin and just shake and blow my flies to dry them off and they'll float fine until another trout takes it down.. couple quick false cast snaps will ring out a fly pretty well too when it does go down without the assistance of a trout

Thanks for all the observations and comments. Seems the jury is out on whether it is any better or worse than other available products. Volume wise its worth it I'd say. Have to field test it in the spring.